Ahem
August was a very fruitful month. Raspberries and blackberries, plums and greengages, even rosehips and sloes suddenly made a massive and early appearance in the hedges and byways along which I walk Max. There were reports from Burgess Hill of previously uncharted bushes within hedges suddenly producing rare and delicious plums.
August was also a very sociable month. To wit, I went to a party at our neighbours and stayed about two hours longer than I had intended. It felt like the kind of party I used to go to among friends with plenty of good conversation, revelations, insights, and surprises. The next morning, I had a sore head and several new acquaintances from nearby houses; Alli and I went to lunch in Burgess Hill with our friends Mary and Brian. Their house has been extended and renovated over the past few years and is now nearing completion, but with no certain indication of when it will be finished. (This also accurately describes the progress of my forthcoming best-selling novel. I have been within months of completing it for several years). Old friends Ian and Lesley came for lunch a few days later and we reminisced with our half-forgotten memories from over forty years ago in Henley-on-Thames, which then rivalled Chicago as a town in the grip of violent conflict between warring families with rival electricians, plumbers, brickies, painters, and decorators who held the shopkeepers and tweedy residents to polite ransom.
We went to see our friends Fionnuala and Andrew, who still live temporarily in Ash Vale, Hampshire, but are now very close to moving to a house in Shalford, Surrey. We walked around Waverley Abbey and had tea at Waverley House. The Abbey was the first Cistercian Abbey in England and remains a place of prayer and retreat, enveloped by a calm and peaceful vista created by the lily-rich lake and a yew tree easily over 650 years old. We had lunch in Shere at a popular Indian restaurant, Mandira’s Kitchen, next to the locally famous Silent Pool, as well as a vineyard and a distillery. We walked our dogs the next day in the woods around the firing range at Ash Vale. Their dog Orla remains under close observation and medical care, but she enjoyed being wheeled about in a pram. The day afterwards I was at the Tickerage Vineyard near Uckfield with Ella, sampling the wines on offer and enjoying the atmosphere. The day after that, Jessie and I saw Fanny Lumsden at the Komedia in Brighton. This was a rip-roaring, high-flying punch-packing jamboree of a concert in which she got the audience so involved that, walking back after the concert, I felt as if I had been at a huge non-stop street party. Gwen came to Uckfield on one of the very sunny days and stayed for the afternoon.
Alli and Waverley Abbey, August 2025
I was caught speeding (37 mph in a 30-mph area) and was invited to attend a three-hour course on driving at speed at the local business hotel, the East Sussex National, a privilege for which I had to pay £100, which coincidentally was also the fine that the Police promised graciously to waive if I attended it. There were some interesting statistics about the impact differences between hitting a pedestrian at 20, 30, and 40mph and my lack of knowledge of the newer provisions of the Highway Code was exposed, but the course was over-long, laden with the sly bonhomie of retired policemen. Oh well. It wasn’t put on for my pleasure. I must try to notice speed limit signs more often.
It was usefully timed just before my journey up the A1(M) to revisit assorted friends in Yorkshire. This time I stayed a couple of nights with Debbie who cooked dinner for me and her friend Mike, drove further north to Consett where I met and chatted with Greg who manages my web sites. He answered my uneducated questions and effortlessly sorted out software problems I had. It was the first time I had ever seen him face to face, although we have talked with each other for over ten years. I then visited Consett’s best tourist sight, the Terris Novalis, a large stainless-steel sculpture by Tony Cragg consisting of a theodolite and an engineer’s level, twenty times’ life size. It stands with the feet of a bird of prey, a horse, a lion, a crocodile, a cow, and a primate’s hand. Sited on what was once Europe’s largest steel works and now wedged awkwardly between a Matalan store and a giant Morrison’s, the statue is a monument to the scale of the local steel industry and its demise.
Angel of the North, Gateshead, August 2025
The Terris Novalis, Consett, August 2025
I drove to Gateshead to pay my respect to the Angel of the North, one of Britain’s newest and most popular tourist sites. It’s a massive statement – confident and proud, showing the brilliance, vision, and power of modern art. I spent the evening and night in a very friendly pub in Durham called The Shoes, then, after visiting beautiful Durham Cathedral, I drove to Otley to have a chatty lunch with Denis, the keeper of the ancestral records of the Stanbrook family, and his wife Katharine.
Charlie and Eric M August 2025
I also saw old friend Paul Rowbotham, our first meeting for many years. It felt like a circle closing. Paul and his partner Diana are now ensconced in a beautiful fold of the Airedale valley near Skipton.
I went on to see three bands playing a loud and lively gig in the Hyde Park Club in Leeds with my friend Charlie. I stayed in Barnsley with Charlie for the next couple of days and walked around the National Coal Mining Museum in Wakefield where there was also an exhibition of the sculptures of Graham Ibbeson. On entering, we guiltily broke a real live picket line, after not understanding from the pickets what the problem was. It was an enlivening and free visit – due to the strike action – although tragically we could not crawl around in some of the tunnels, one of the attractions of the museum. Next time maybe. I arrived back in Uckfield after a difficult drive south, made easier by the GPS providentially directing me away from huge traffic jams around the M25.
As the striking miners once chanted, “Here we go…”
Lionel